Where is the LENR goal line, and how best do we get there?

Now your expressed doubts seem to come from a standpoint suggesting qualifications, except no plausible scientific evidence is adduced? So let's have a brief resume, don't be shy, let us know why we should care a whit for your 'doubts'.

Typical. I am not the one you have to convince. I do not hand out grants. Wish I did. News: I don't care whether you care about my doubts. But you'd better care about the fact LENR can't get funding. IMO because there are not sufficiently impressive demonstrations and experiments. I know Jed. I know.

But that [lurid accusations that they are liars, criminals, lunatics and frauds] . . . didn't happen initially. The opposite did. How do you explain the interest and acclaim for the F&P announcement?

Oh yes it did. You should read Mallove's history, Beaudette's or the Fleischmann letters. Within a day the plasma fusion people put headlines in the Boston Globe and elsewhere saying this was criminal fraud. Within a week, scientists were demanding that F&P be arrested. There was some support, but there was far greater opposition, and it grew in intensity.

You don't have to take my word for it. Read the back issues of Nature, the Washington Post, the New York Times or other mass media. See, for example:

And all the attempts to replicate it? And all the corporate and government funding which the field received and which didn't pan out (other than in the opinion of a few enthusiasts).

Most of the attempts succeeded. By 1990, 92 groups succeeded. Some others failed, but by that time the reasons they failed were obvious, and in most cases they were doing a completely different experiment, so these cannot be called failed replications. Also, as far as I know, all of the failed attempts were made by groups that did not include an electrochemist. Imagine, if you will, a group of electrochemists trying to build a Tokamak reactor without help from a plasma fusion scientist. See:

As I put it: "From an electrochemist’s point of view, these people were trying to tune a piano with a sledgehammer." McKubre is quoted making similar remarks.

There was practically no funding, in 1989, or anytime thereafter. I saw the actual experimental setups in many cases (or photos of them). They were shoestring efforts using equipment that was already in hand. It was superb equipment, but it didn't cost anything. They already had it. Most people who replicated, such as Bockris, were in the best electrochemical labs in the world. They had the kinds of equipment they needed, and they knew how to use it. See the photos of equipment here:

The first one shows Bockis next to an array of cells. He had a large staff of people and grad students, lots of space, and tons of equipment like that, so it was easy for him to put this together with essentially no budget. Whereas someone who was not in an electrochemistry lab would have to go to great expense and would have to spend a few years learning how to do it. There are countless ways to do this wrong, which is why only groups with electrochemists succeeded.

My purpose in posting Yoshino et. al. was to illustrate the sort of project LENR enthusiasts should promote -- projects purported to be able to produce kilowatts, presumably self sustaining after an initial start.

As I said, I was not impressed by their work. Nor was I impressed when their lawyer sent me a letter demanding I "cease and desist from copyright violations," because I critiqued the graphs they showed at MIT. Normally, when an academic scientist shows graphs and then circulates them, and someone points out possible errors in them, the scientist does not have his lawyer send a letter threatening a lawsuit.

Other scientists who shall not be named have done that to me, and I don't think much of them either. But never with such . . . panache, I guess is the word I am looking for. No language is better suited than Japanese for infuriating officious letters from lawyers.

Anyway, this isn't 1990. Anyone can write on the internet. Anyone can start a crowd-funding page.

Crowd funding. Right, okay. Cold fusion was most recently replicated at the Aerospace Corporation. They have 40 labs with billions of dollars in equipment, and a staff including the very best best people on earth for materials, mass spectroscopy, and other specialties that are essential to developing cold fusion. Cold fusion was previously replicated in about 180 labs such as the ones I show here:

These labs were staffed by people who designed and built nuclear weapons, and the best tritium laboratories in the world, as Los Alamos and BARC (India). People who literally wrote the book on electrochemistry, tritium, helium detection and so on. Many of these people said this was the most difficult experiment they ever did. It hasn't gotten any easier, any more than robot exploration of Mars has. There has been progress because people know more about how to do the experiment. That makes it harder, not easier. Just as it harder to design an Intel CPU than it used to be.

Do you seriously think we could hire a few dozen of the best qualified people on earth, and put them into a world-class lab with the kinds of precision equipment shown in that photo, with "crowd funding"? Why not suggest we do crowd funding to send a robot to Mars?

Granted, cold fusion is far easier and cheaper than sending robots to Mars. It takes many fewer people and much less money (a few hundred million versus ~$5 billion). But those cold fusion researchers have be as smart, skilled and well equipped as the thousands of people it takes to launch a Mars mission, or the people who design and manufacture Intel CPUs. It will probably take hundreds of millions of dollars to learn how to control cold fusion. It will probably take the kind of robotic equipment used these days in similar materials research.

Cold fusion is also probably on the order of 10,000 times cheaper than making a plasma fusion tokamak power reactor would be, if that can be done at all. It is far closer to being a practical device. Only a handful of problems have to be solved, whereas no one has a clue how to go from a plasma fusion reaction to electricity. This is probably why the plasma fusion scientists were the first to attack it, and why they remain the most active enemies, sabotaging projects and savaging people's reputations and careers.

Not too clear what you write of here SOT, but that is a very good description of hot fusion in its 60 year and several hundred billion dollar set of efforts. And the likelihood of success is about the same.

I do not know what you refer to, but a plasma fusion scientist once told me that trying to contain a plasma is like nailing jello to a tree. You make a magnetic field that will hold one part of the plasma, in one condition, and another part escapes.

Cold fusion is a lot easier. It has also produced far more energy in one test, albeit less power. Years ago, the record for plasma fusion was 10 MJ at the PPPL. That test more or less destroyed the reactor, I gather. Many cold fusion experiments have produced more energy than that, ranging from 50 to 100 MJ. Also, plasma fusion reactions last a fraction of a second and they would destroy the reactor and kill everyone if they went on for minutes or hours, whereas cold fusion reactions have produced 10 to 100 W for weeks or months, continuously. Any way you look at it, cold fusion is more promising and closer to being practical than plasma fusion. I assume that is why the plasma fusion people are so determined to prevent any research in cold fusion.

Not too clear what you write of here SOT, but that is a very good description of hot fusion in its 60 year and several hundred billion dollar set of efforts.

That is literally, true, as I said. Plasma fusion is very similar to nailing jello to a tree, according to a plasma fusion researcher I once knew. (I went to Cornell with him, and I hung around the plasma fusion lab, so I know a thing or two about it.)

Just a point on Longchamps, as I know he is one of the only to have replicated the tricky isoperibolic calorimetry of F&P, which he proven was very subtle and efficient.

[...]

Replicating the instrument is not the best way to prove a point. changing the measurement method is good to cross check.

In this case his "careful, step by step replication" "of the 1993 boil-off experiments reported by Pons and Fleischmann" (1) was the best way to make us sure that F&P miscalculated the excess heat, and that their "tricky isoperibolic calorimetry" was conceptually wrong.

Lonchampt made a superb work, and wrote a couple of fundamental papers for understanding the reality and the history of CF/LENR.

Replicating the instrument is not the best way to prove a point. changing the measurement method is good to cross check.

Yes. The only problem is when the instrument affects the performance of the experiment. For example, some kinds of calorimeters prevent the cell from getting hot. If a reaction occurs, heat will enhance it, but these calorimeters will prevent that.

The only problem is when the instrument affects the performance of the experiment.

This would have been a problem if the claimed phenomenon was real, but being LENR a non-existent phenomenon, the apparently positive performances obtained in some experiments are always due to one or more flaws in the instruments or in the method used to measure the data and calculate the energy balance. This is why in order to successfully replicate the results of a alleged positive LENR experiment, it is ESSENTIAL to exactly reproduce the original test set-up and carefully follow the original procedures step by step.

This maniacal care in reproducing every detail of the original tests, allowed Lonchampt to successfully replicate the F&P original experiments, achieving the same results. Today, after many years, the quite good description of his work presented at ICCF6 and ICCF7, allows us to better recognize the incredible flaws that determined those apparently positive results, both in the original experiments of F&P, and in the accurate replications of Lonchampt.

Why do you visit this forum? For closed minds there are better places - like the catholic church, just to name one...

Because CF/LENR is the most interesting socio-psychological phenomenon in the last decades. Nothing better than LENR shows to what extent humans are capable of self-delusion. It has been a privilege to have had the possibility to examine its technical details and to exchange opinions with some of its main protagonists. I learned a lot discussing about the Ecat, and LENR in general. LENR touches almost every aspect of the reality of our world: science, politics, finance, psychology, rhetoric, global emergencies such as depletion of resources and climate change, and even … religion, why not? After all, science and technology - especially their pseudo-versions - operate nowadays as the new universal religions of the humankind.

This forum started his activity in February 2014 (1), strongly supporting the reality of the Ecat. At least 3 out of 5 administrators were fervent supporters of this "faith". The icon of one of them showed a hot-cat and the words "I WANT TO BELIEVE". But thanks to the mind openness of these same administrators, this forum has also accepted the opposite point of views, so that now, after 4 years, only few of his members still believe the Rossi-says, and these lasts are considered as members of a cult or a religion (2). All the other former believers have lost a "faith" but have acquired a "truth". Was it a positive or a negative outcome for them? And for you?

What if the "cult in the Ecat" is just a sect of a larger "cult in CF/LENR" which lasts since F&P spread it in 1989 (which in turns is a sect of the "super-cult in science and technology")?

This thread is devoted to investigate where the goal line of LENR is. It might be useful to remember where the starting line was, and also to consider the possibility that the two apostles of this religion were simply wrong.

What if the "cult in the Ecat" is just a sect of a larger "cult in CF/LENR" which lasts since F&P spread it in 1989 (which in turns is a sect of the "super-cult in science and technology")?

Ascoli,

IMO, that is being overly harsh. Even with a (?) mark at the end. Cult's can never be convinced otherwise. Once we saw the facts as laid out in the court documents, we were convinced and now are Rossi's most ferocious critics. Even before that, there was much suspicion, but that was held in check by Rossi partnering up with IH.

It is also unfair of you to lump Rossi in with the rest of the field, portraying all as one "socio-psychological phenomenon". Even you must realize that is a bit if a stretch? LENR history, quality of the research/researchers, motivations, personalities, are all different from, and better than Rossi and his story. They could not be more different. Obviously, as others have said, you will not be convinced of that, so I will not try.

Overall, I thought your post was bitter, almost personal, and very unlike you. You have always had it in for those surrounding Rossi's early years, but were usually polite about it I thought, and you targeted only them. Now, after slaying the Ecat, you seem to have set your sights on doing the same to LENR, and anyone associated with it. That is fine by me. We have plenty of skeptics here, yet LF is still thriving. Just keep in mind that there is no crime in doing the research, or believing in those doing the research. So no reason to make it personal.

Because CF/LENR is the most interesting socio-psychological phenomenon in the last decades. Nothing better than LENR shows to what extent humans are capable of self-delusion. It has been a privilege to have had the possibility to examine its technical details and to exchange opinions with some of its main protagonists. I learned a lot discussing about the Ecat, and LENR in general. LENR touches almost every aspect of the reality of our world: science, politics, finance, psychology, rhetoric, global emergencies such as depletion of resources and climate change, and even … religion, why not? After all, science and technology - especially their pseudo-versions - operate nowadays as the new universal religions of the humankind.

It's is OK to debunk Rossi, who simply has no clue about the physics, that is underplayed to his experiments.

But unluckily for you, soon people will call today standard model physics being pseudo science. Hot fusion, the offspring of a military lie, will be named the most unsuccessful project ever, burning megatons of money, we would need to educate, e.g. 90% of the undereducated US population.

The sect of standard model physicists is worse than the catholic church, but the successful explanation of LENR physics will "push them over the cliff".

I just followed the appeal launched by JR in this same thread. He strongly urged those who are not persuaded by the reality of the CF/LENR phenomena to look at the technical details of the boil-off experiments performed by F&P and by their replicators, in particular Lonchampt.

LENR is far more than just demonstrating successful excess heat. May be you should spend some time with reading papers and attending meetings. Jaque Ruer (presented this spring in Paris) recently analyzed ( in a professional lab) one of the famous Fleischmann electrodes, that produced a lot of excess-heat, to look for transmutations. The seen isotope shift can only be explained by a nuclear reaction between palladium and deuterium.

But we need not to convince you that LENR is real. It's your turn to explain why one silver isotope is seen in a much higher, than the natural ratio.

If you don't understand that it is your turn to disprove all the LENR findings, then may be, you don't understand how science works.